So I’ve read another couple of books in the Fetherings series recently, and it’s another series that’s really easy to read at this time of year – small town murder mysteries at the seaside make for perfect autumnal reading somehow. So this is another Simon Brett series – and has the same sort of humour and murder mix that you get in Charles Paris and Mrs Pargeter but this time with a duo at the centre in neighbours Carole and Jude and their contrasting personalities. I’m about a dozen into the series now and the setting are still pretty varied but with enough call backs to previous books and developments to make them fun if you’re binging, but not so many that you can’t just pick them up and carry on.
They’re also very bingeable – so if you can get hold of them it’s very easy to run through them at speed, but they do sometimes have a bit of a price issue – I can read them in a couple of hours and that effects how much I’m willing to pay!
We’re really into the run in to Christmas now and new releases are getting a little thin, so I was surprised to see that the sequel to Nita Prose’s buzzy hit The Maid was coming out in the US this week, but it is – although if you’re in the UK you have to wait until January. In The Mystery Guest, Molly is now head maid at the Regency Grand, but murder comes back into her life again when a famous author drops dead in his hotel suite and the hotel staff comes under suspicion. When I read The Maid last year, I thought that Molly was an interesting narrator, where the reader can see things that she doesn’t, and I was relieved when she was still the same person at the end of the book (if that makes sense), so I’ll be interested to see if that can translate into a sequel. The Maid got a really wide release, so I suspect this one will be easy to find if you want it.
It’s turned terribly cold here this week. The car is frozen in the mornings when I head for the station and I’ve caved in and cracked out the big coat. So today my recommendations are books ideal for reading while wrapped in a blanket, maybe in front of a fire, ignoring the cold outside.
Is it cheating to start with Murder on the Orient Express? Because the train literally gets stuck in a snow drift on the night of the murder. It’s also one of my all time favourite murder mysteries for reasons that I can’t explain without spoiling the plot. And I know it’s nearly ninety years old and if you’ve only read one Agatha Christie it’s probably this one, but it’s so clever I don’t want to ruin it for any first timers even now!
A similar sort of age but completely different, Daphne Du Maurier’s Rebecca is creepy and atmospheric and for some reason just feels like a book to read as the nights are closing in and it gets dark early. Be grateful you don’t have a creepy house keeper watching your every move as the second Mrs de Winter discovers a few things her new husband hasn’t told her about.
And now for something much more recent, and a former Book of the Week back in 2019. Evvie Drake Starts Over was Linda Holmes’ debut novel and features a widowed older heroine and an injured baseball player in Maine. They have actual conversations, they seem to like each other and it’s just a big warm hug, despite the death in the backstory. Also a romance, but a very different end of the gene, I want to give a mention to Nora Roberts – I know sinner people like romantic suspense at this time of year, but I’m never a big romantic suspense reader, so I’m going for a straight up romance and The Next Always which features a heroine with kids, a bookstore and a possibly haunted hotel. Perfect for a rainy day and if you like it, it’s the first in the Inn at Boonsboro trilogy.
Now I know it has its issues, but there aren’t many books that have transported me to a world like Memoirs of a Geisha did. Arthur Golden’s novel is about the life of a young woman in Kyoto in the run up to the Second World War as she trains to become a Geisha. It’s much better than the movie was. I promise. Just writing this has made me want to read it again. And that’s your lot, i hope there’s something that appeals to you.
Given that I went out three evenings last week – and had a busy weekend, I’m surprised the list is as long as it is! Anyway a fairly mystery heavy week of what there was. There’s less theatre and more train time this week, so we’ll see what that means for next week’s list!
Well, two nights at the theatre meant less time for reading, but I did finish a couple of things off and there’s an audiobook on there too as well as a comic, but actually it all worked out ok and I even think I have something to write about tomorrow!
Small town romance bonkers premise. Well we’re getting close to Christmas and I’ve started thinking Christmassy recommendations and as I was doing that ended up on a bit of a tangent and I realised that I haven’t written about Susan Mallery’s happily Inc series, so today I’m remedying that!
So this is a small town romance series, set in California and the twist here (because what is a romance series without a gimmick or a twist) is that the small town in question is a wedding destination town. Now bear with me, I know that sounds bonkers, but it does work. The heroine of the first book in the series, Pallas, runs a. Venue called Weddings in a Box, but it is struggling. If she can’t make it work she’ll have to give in to her mum and take a job at the family bank (again, Brits bear with me, small banks are a thing in the States). Nick is the venue’s new carpenter (they need one to assemble the wedding spaces) but he’s actually doing the job between sculpting gigs because he’s an artist from a family of artist s. Which means books two and three are his brothers and by the time you’ve done that you’ve got a bunch of established side characters to follow for books five and six.
I’ve written about Mallery’s Fool’s Gold series before and if you liked those, these are doing a similar thing but with more gimmicks. Like a royalties. And a (small) herd of giraffes. Yes it’s alla bit bonkers, but it’s the fun sort of romance novel bonkers where all the other characters don’t bat an eyelid at whatever revelation anyone throws at them and everyone gets a happily ever after.
And I’ve of the best things about doing this now is that several of them are on offer for either 99p or £1.99, which is nice although they’ve been recovered so I nearly bought a couple that I’d already read again! Anyway, here’s the links to the Kindle page for the series and the Kobo one.
I’ve been reading Alexa Martin since I heard her interviewed on Smart Bitches Trashy Books’s podcast when I was walking around a shopping outlet in Maryland five years ago. Then she was writing romances with NFL playing heroes – informed by her own time as an NFL wife, now she’s writing standalones. So this is a book that I would have preordered, ready to drop on to my kindle on release day, even if it wasn’t adjacent to one of my current obsessions – home renovation. Adjacent because Next Door Nemesis is about two people fighting to become president of a home owners association – a thing that exists mostly in my head as a problem for people renovating homes because of the rules about what you can do to the outside of your home, and the fees you have to pay. Is sounds like a really fun concept for an enemies to lovers romance and I can’t wait to read it!
It’s nearly two years since my original Enemies to Lovers Recommendsday, and I’ve read a load more since, so today I’m back with another batch!
Lets start with The Hating Game by Sally Thorne I loved Thorne’s Second First Impressions and this was her debut novel (now also a movie) which features two rival PAs at a publishing company. I have a few issues with it but in the end they actually weren’t about what I was expecting – which was that their work rivalry would push my buttons for unprofessional pranks, but it actually didn’t because they didn’t sabotage each other. Lucinda does freak out a lot though and that did get on my nerves a bit so your mileage may vary, so generally for me – not as good as Second First Impressions, but still fun and worth reading.
In Beach Read by Emily Henry, Augustus and January are maybe more misunderstood rivals than they are enemies, because he is a Serious Writer of Proper Fiction and she writes best selling romances. They’re spending the summer living next door to each other at the beach and in an attempt to tackle both of their writers blocks, they challenge each other to switch genres… Anyway, there are complicated families and a warning for parental deaths in the backstories, but this is still a delightful feel good romance where two people discover that they really like hanging around with each other and that being together makes their lives better. Swoony. Oh and Henry’s Book Lovers would also fit this genre too.
Ali Hazelwood’sLove Hypothesis got a mention in the last post on this topic, but her Love on the Brain also fits this trope – the heroine of that finds that the downside of her dream job at Nasa is that she has to work with her grad school arch-nemesis. It’s another teeny tiny heroine and Great Big Hero, but your mileage on that may be different to mine, which I think is coloured by the fact that I’m 5’10! I will never be tired of competency porn though, and Bee (and Levi) are very, very good at their jobs. I was expecting one strand of the plot to be A Bigger Thing in the resolution, but actually the whole of the end wrapped up very quickly – but it was very satisfying.
And before I wrap this up, I want to give a mention to Mia Sosa’s Worst Best Manwhich I did also touch on in my romances with weddings post in the summer but would also fit for this.
After the disappointment of the airport last week, I have actually spotted some of the Christmas releases in the wild, so here we are with this Saturday’s post!
So to start with, thank you Sainsbury’s for being super useful, and not just for decaf coffee for my mum and dad. Their chart selection has a lot of those Christmas new releases if you’re thinking about gift buying and getting some loyalty points to help you in January! Obviously the Britney Spears memoir has had huge amounts of talk, and I’ve already mentioned the Patrick Stewart book too, but they’ve also got Arnold Schwarzenegger’s new book, Dawn French’s tour tie in, Billy Connelly and one I’ve been keeping an eye out for, Phillippa Gregory’s non fiction book about women in history. And then there’s the fiction options, with the latest batch of celebrity novels and some big names like Sophie Kinsella and Sarah Morgan.
Next acrosswe have some more of the Christmas releases – I saw Michael Palin at work the other week while he was doing the promotional trail for his book Great Uncle Harry, and David Mitchell has done a bunch of the talk shows for his book about the monarchy as has Miriam Margolyes about her latest memoir. We also have a sighting in the wild of the new V E Schwab. Then there’s the usual batch of cook books, the traditional Alan Partridge book and Clare Balding. I’ve also read a bunch of Dan Jones’s history books but haven’t read any of his historical fiction yet – Wolves of Winter of the second in what going to be a trilogy – if you’re in the US, this second one doesn’t come out where you are until January.
Next up, more cook books, plus Strictly start Johannes Radebe’s memoir and buzzy autumn release Yellowface, which I have read and didn’t love but I know lots of people who have really entered it. Plus the usual batch of best seller authors like John Grisham and Jo Nesbo. Then there’s an Anthony Horowitz James Bond and Lessons in Chemistry – the adaptation of which has just dropped on Apple TV!
The next shelf was a bit patchy, so I’m skipping it, but you can see the interesting bits in the edges of this photo and the last one – so Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow and the S J Parris on the last picture and the Mary Berry baking book on this one! Finally, right down the end her we have some Colleen Hoover (because is it even a book selection without her at the moment!) plus a few more of the high selling, long running favourites. And then there’s the kids books obviously!
And that’s your lot for today, hourly is been at least somewhat useful as you plan your Christmas book purchasing – and don’t worry, I’ll have some recommendations coming up in the next few woods to!
The latest book in Rhys Bowen’s Royal Spyness series came out this week so I’m taking the opportunity to have another little chat about how much I love this series. It’s the 1930s and our heroine is Georgiana, a cousin of the king and granddaughter of Queen Victoria (just go with it and don’t think too hard about that bit) who is trying to build herself a niche in a changing world and runs parallel to some key events in interwar history.
When I wrote about my original series I love post, there were 15 books in the series- but now we’re up to 17 and well into 1936, which is obviously a Big Year for the Royal Family – and has turned out to be a big one for Georgie too. At this point every time a new Royal Spyness book comes out, I wonder if it’s the last one and whether we’ve nearly reached a logical ending for the series. I haven’t read the latest one yet so I don’t know if it is this time – but I really hope it’s not because these are such good fun, and Georgie is such a lovely heroine that it’s always fun to spend time in her admittedly body-strewn orbit! If you take away the royal connection they’re very similar to Carola Dunn’s Daisy Dalrymple series – with a fairly innocent heroine, which makes for a lot of entertainment when Georgie finds herself among the Happy Valley set whereas Phryne Fisher (for example) wouldn’t have been shocked, but would probably have found it all very tiring!
I’ve been able to borrow these from the library and buy them in stores so hopefully if you’re interested you can get hold of some of them, although this latest is Kindle or American hardback import only at the moment.
Verity Reads Books (lots of them) 